The spell was indeed beginning to break. Guido Cavalcanti, Dante's strange, stern, speculative friend, who is one of the fathers of the Italian language, is characterised in the _Commedia_[98] by his scornful dislike of Latin, even in the mouth of Virgil. Yet Dante himself, the great assertor, by argument and example, of the powers of the Vulgar tongue, once dared not to think that the Vulgar tongue could be other to the Latin, than as a subject to his sovereign. He was bolder when he wrote _De Vulgari Eloquio_: but in the earlier _Convito_, while pleading earnestly for the beauty of the Italian, he yields with reverence the first place to the Latin--for nobleness, because the Latin is permanent, and the Vulgar subject to fluctuation and corruption; for power, because the Latin can express conceptions to which the Vulgar is unequal; for beauty, because the structure of the Latin is a masterly arrangement of scientific art, and the beauty of the Vulgar depends on mere use.[99] The very title of his poem, the _Commedia_, contains in it a homage to the lofty claims of the Latin. It is called a Comedy, and not Tragedy, he says, after a marvellous account of the essence and etymology of the two, first, because it begins sadly, and ends joyfully; and next, because of its language, that humble speech of ordinary life, "in which even women converse."[100] [Footnote 98: _Inf._ 10, and compare the _Vit. N._ p. 334, ed. Fraticelli.] [Footnote 99: _Convito_, i. 5.] [Footnote 100: Ep. ad Kan Grand. §9,--a curious specimen of the learning of the time: "Sciendum est, quod _Comoedia_ dicitur a [Greek: kômê], _villa_ et [Greek: ôdê], quod est _cantus_, unde _Comoedia_ quasi _villanus cantus_. Et est _Comoedia genus quoddam poeticæ narrationis_, ab omnibus aliis differens. Differt ergo a Tragoedia in materia per hoc, quod Tragoedia in principio est admirabilis et quieta, in fine foetida et horribilis; et dicitur propter hoc a [Greek: tragos], i.e. _hircus_, et [Greek: ôdê], quasi _cantus hircinus_, i.e. foetidus ad modum hirci, ut patet per Senecam in suis tragoediis. _Comoedia_ vero inchoat asperitatem alicujus rei, sed ejus materia prospere terminatur, ut patet per Terentium in suis _Comoediis_.... Similiter differunt in modo loquendi; elate et sublime Tragoedia, _Comoedia_ vero remisse et humiliter sicut vult Horat. in Poët.... Et per hoc patet, quod _Comoedia_ diciter præsens opus. Nam si ad materiam respiciamus, a principio horribilis et foetida est, quia _Infernus_: in fine prospera, desiderabilis et grata, quia _Paradisus_. Si ad modum loquendi, remissus est modus et humilis, quia locutio Vulgaris, in qua et mulierculæ communicant. Et sic patet quia _Comoedia_ dicitur." Cf. de Vulg. Eloq. 2, 4, _Parad._ 30. He calls the Æneid, "_l'alta Tragedia_," _Inf._ 20, 113. Compare also Boccaccio's explanation of his mother's dream of the _peacock_. Dante, he says, is like the Peacock, among other reasons, "because the peacock has coarse feet,